Photo: NEON/Everett Collection
Sean Baker has a long history of making movies where the gap with reality is important. With each project he began, he carved his way into New Jersey’s social circles, almost certainly the only man from a middle-class background, convincing the residents to play ball and cutting them out of their lives. Gather details to inform the film. He has used this approach to tell stories about delivery men, counterfeit bag hustlers, wannabe porn stars, and desperate single mothers. These aren’t documentaries, but Baker says he wants them to feel like one. In some films, he tried to accomplish that by shooting with a shaky handheld video camera or a modified iPhone. In some scenes, he shoots in a candid camera style, having the actors intermingle with passersby and then follow them in release form. Many of his actors are first-timers. Baker made a name for herself this way, breaking out in 2015 with her fifth feature, Tangerine, about two young trans sex workers running wild on the sidewalks of LA. Since then, he has become widely known and won awards for making films depicting the lives of Americans on the “frontier,” as critics like to call them.
His films tend to be skeptical of the system. The characters’ journeys are littered with Catch-22s, perhaps most importantly in the 2017 film The Florida Project, which follows a group of people who accidentally end up staying in a motel on the outskirts of Orlando for an extended period of time. She also loses her state benefits because she doesn’t want to sleep with her clients. This drives her to sex work anyway, and ultimately causes her to lose custody of her child. It’s tempting to think that a filmmaker who makes so many films about poor people and workers would be politically left-leaning. This is not something Baker was actively looking to confirm. When an interviewer asks him why he’s drawn to these stories, he says it’s because he wants to represent people who don’t usually appear on screen. “Both Democracy Now! and Ben Shapiro also liked the movie and thought it was the best movie of the year. That taught me a lot,” he told The Florida Project. talked about. “Actually, we’re doing the right thing because we’re telling a story that both sides can discuss,” he said. , admitted that the washed-up porn actor has something in common with President Trump. However, he added, “One of the themes this film addresses is division, so I try to be as politically neutral as possible.”
That’s why his latest work, Anora, is an outlier. For the first time, Baker created a clear ruling-class villain in his story, someone whom the other characters saw, heard, obeyed, and crushed. Even if his previous films hint at a stacked deck, it remains vague as to who stacked it. Anora just tells us: It was the super rich.
It starts out like a romantic comedy, with Anora (Mikey Madison) and Ivan (Mark Eidelstein) falling in love. Well, maybe it’s not love. But Anora and Ivan are married, and for the first time in a while, Ani (as she wants to call her) is relaxing and having fun. No more working late nights at midtown strip clubs. When she was working as a dancer, Ivan, with his big blue eyes and cute Russian accent, moved in. She’s a feminine 23-year-old while he’s a boyish 21-year-old, but the difference hardly matters when he’s stuffing hundreds of them into her G-string. He asks her to call him home for sex and she likes him and says yes. When she saw his Brooklyn mansion, she loved it so much she said yes again. He tells her who her infamous father is, and it’s kind of impressive. Ani has learned a little Russian from her grandmother, but she doesn’t pay attention to what’s going on there. All she knows is that she’s found the most non-threatening high roller in the world. One thing leads to another, which leads to Las Vegas, where she becomes Ivan’s “little wife.” For him, marriage means an attractive woman and a green card. For her, it’s a ticket out of life. “You won the lottery, bitch!” said one of Ani’s friends at the club when she returned to empty her locker. We already know that Anora is a story about an odd couple, but they’re not the odd couple we’d expect. This is because after hearing about Ivan’s marriage, Ivan’s parents want the marriage to be annulled. And whether you like it or not, the three henchmen they send to accomplish the task will become Annie’s enemies and allies.
The Bakers have explored the friction between servers and servers since 2004’s Take Out. “Take Out” is his second film and the only one he co-directed with Shih-ching Tso. (The Taiwanese director later produced and starred in several of Baker’s films.) Takeout, a vérité-inspired challenge about a long day in New York, features Delivery boy Ming Ding struggles to earn enough tips to pay for his food. I cut the loan shark off my back. He brings order to the apartments of one customer after another, ranging from the polite and perfunctory to the angry and racist. (Some people scoff, saying, “You don’t speak English?”) The relationship is one of mutual resentment and indifference. Ming Ding needs to have enough of these interactions to achieve his goals. In other Baker films, the law is in turmoil, such as the partnership between a West African man peddling counterfeit bags and a Lebanese man who uses a Midtown storefront as a showroom and hiding place in 2008’s Prince of Broadway. The theme is a political marriage that occurs in the gray area of Japan. Earn a spot in exchange for a portion of the revenue.
Annie’s mistake is to see her relationship as a luxurious version of the latter, a marriage of convenience in a sable fur coat. Actually it’s the former. It is a straight hierarchy of servers and service recipients. In her heart, she is a hustler who knows her worth. Why shouldn’t she join Ivan’s family? It’s up to the villains to enlighten her. When the henchmen show up at Ivan’s mansion and tell him that his parents are on their way from Russia to have the marriage annulled, Ivan is horrified and infuriated by the Armenian fixer Toros (Baker’s longtime collaborator). He leaves his wife in the care of Karen, who is also known as Karen, and sets off on foot. Karagrian), Toros’s younger brother Garnik (Vashe Tovmasyan), and a young Russian man, Igor (Yula Borisov), whom they bring to help. “You don’t understand. He disgraced his family by marrying someone like you,” Toros yells at Ani. He threatened to have her arrested. “You should already have a criminal record. One, two, three, you’re in jail,” he says, calling her a “prostitute” and “whore.” Her husband is a nightmare, he is also the first person to reach her level. “I’m telling you, you don’t know this guy,” he says. “I’ve been dealing with his shit since he was 6 years old.”
So Ivan was gone. His parents have not yet been found. As a result, Annie and her minions remain stuck together. By introducing and then removing his richest and most powerful characters, Baker sets up a present absence that hovers over much of the film. Neither Toros nor Ani can move forward without Ivan. Annie can’t give up on the fairy tale because Toros will be wiped out by her boss. After the Wildcat Screwball fight scene between Annie and her friends, Annie almost wins. Pole dancer kicks are no joke. They accept the mission to find Gaki.
They gather on the outskirts of Thoros and begin searching. “He fucked me much harder than he fucked you,” Toros rants as he roams the streets of South Brooklyn with Ani, Garnick, and Igor. Annie grins (“Oh, really?”), but it might be true. As day turns to night with no end in sight, it becomes clear that working for an oligarch can be hell. Thoros despises the child and fears parents who have the power to ruin his life. He warns the men that once they finally capture Ivan, they should not touch him. Harming the prince can be more costly than their job. Meanwhile, Garnick, who thought his brother was doing well, can’t believe how unappreciated the show actually is. “I didn’t sign up for this,” he groaned. “I want to go back to Armenia!” Igor stands apart from his brothers. In some ways, he’s like Ani, with a bit of freelancing muscle, using his body to pay the bills. We see early on that he’s attracted to Ani’s rebelliousness, even when she calls him a “gopnik” and a “faggot.” Even if he understands the danger she’s in better than she does.
Anora is Baker’s strongest film because it has a clearer point of view than his other films. By the end, it couldn’t be more obvious that Annie and her minions share an enemy. Of course, for politically averse filmmakers, the Russian oligarchy is also an easy villain. This is the preferred choice for Democracy Now! Ben Shapiro wouldn’t disagree. Like Baker’s other characters, the shape of Anora’s oligarchy corresponds to reality. The exterior of Ivan’s house was photographed on a property in Brooklyn’s Mill Basin, previously owned by the Russian billionaire’s ex-wife. (The state of New York introduced their daughter at a time when she was being touted as the “Russian-American Paris Hilton.”) The Ivan family’s comic-book wealth, all private jets and mansions, is similar to Baker’s previous It allows for the kind of judgment that the film had avoided. The filmmaker is, as always, cautious on this point. “When you’re too calculated to say, ‘Here’s my grand statement about late capitalism,’ it gets a little contrived and a little preachy,” he told a reporter. “But in a country that’s becoming more divided by the day, it’s hard to ignore that.” It’s also hard to ignore that Baker has given himself room to roll with the punches.
Ani and Ivan were never intended to work. However, Ani and Igor begin to have doubts. There was discord between the two from their first scene together. Although Tolos would never admit that he has more in common with the Brighton Beach sex workers than with his boss, Igor has no such baggage. He is attracted to Annie. More than that, he recognizes her. He may see in her the anger against the ruling class in which he wants to express himself. As the humiliation mounts and Ani’s dreams crumble, Baker directs us to see the scene through Igor’s eyes. We see him trying to take care of her despite Annie’s bitter feelings. Later in the film, the two find themselves alone. Igor spoke words of comfort and solidarity to her. “I’m glad you’re not part of this family,” he says. Annie isn’t going to tell him this. “Did I hear your shitty opinion?”